The Only Man I Ever Loved
by Sammy07
Summary: Post-Saw. Lawrence succumbs to his injuries after managing to get help for Adam. Adam, grief-stricken, doesn't know what to think when he finds himself falling in love with another person. SLASH. Don't read if you don't like.
1. Chapter 1

Whew! It's been a while since I've written anything. To those of you who have read and enjoyed (and reviewed, especially) my fanfiction, thanks a lot! And don't worry; I'm still alive. I've just been really busy with insignificant crap that doesn't matter because it doesn't involve Adam and Lawrence. I hope all of us ChainShipping fans can keep this wonderful fandom going forever! Or at least until I die.

Quick note: This fanfic is not strictly Adam/Lawrence. Well, it is, but it's also Adam/OC later on, since Lawrence doesn't actually make it in this fic. :( As I say in my profile, I don't mind killing Lawrence off occasionally, as long as Adam finds someone else to love, but NEVER kill off Adam. NEVER Adam. Also, I don't own Saw, worst luck. I will one day, though! And by then, it'll be heavy Adam/Lawrence porn! Sweet...

X X X X X X X X X X

Adam lay facedown on the hard, tiled floor of the filthy, deteriorated bathroom, the chain around his ankle that bound him to the solid, unbreakable pipe digging hard into his flesh.

He was crying, crying harder than he ever had in his whole life. Never had he felt this scared and alone. Lawrence, the older man who had been chained by the opposite side of the room that they were trapped in, before he'd severed his own foot to escape, had left to find help for them both. Lawrence, Adam's only friend and companion, not just in this horrible place, but in the entire world. The young man had no one, hadn't since he was sixteen.

Lawrence was so calm and collected, so kind and caring, that Adam had felt closer to him than any of the men that he'd called his friends over the past years. They were all a bunch of underachieving losers, anyway, just like him, taking pictures of others, invading their privacy, just like him. They couldn't care less if went missing. They probably wouldn't even notice his absence. But Lawrence... He was just so perfect.

Adam smiled, despite the terrible situation he was in, despite how pale and sickly the surgeon had looked when he'd left, promising to come back for his cellmate, promising that they'd both be okay. That man was always so rational. It was something that Adam, being extremely lightheaded and impulsive, would have envied until normal circumstances.

Something seemed to flash in Adam's head, and he sat up, abruptly. Zep, the infamous Jigsaw Killer who had put the two men into this dreaded place, was lying dead beside the prisoner, his face mangled beyond recognition, in easy reach of the boundaries of the ex photographer's chain.

Adam had done that himself... He'd viciously beaten that orderly to death with the stone basin that he'd grabbed. He hadn't thought; all he'd cared about was stopping the bastard from killing Lawrence, and then him, probably. He didn't care about that now, though. Zep had put them and others through so much, he deserved it. At least Adam had ridded the world of one less serial killer, whether the sick bastard described himself otherwise or not.

"_I help those who do not appreciate the lives they were given."_

That was pretty much the personal philosophy of that man. If he found someone whom he deemed unfit to live the healthy, productive chance of life that they'd been given, then the killer would find them, and put the subjects through horrible tests that were either extremely dangerous, self-mutilating, or both. Unfortunately, Adam and Lawrence had been two such people, according to Jigsaw, so he'd chosen them, kidnapped them both from their "ungrateful" lives and brought them to this place for their so-called test.

But Jigsaw was the one who put them both in here... Surely, _surely_, he'd have a key to the shackle that still bound Adam. Desperately, hurriedly, too terrified and excited to care that he was touching a dead man - a man that he'd killed himself, moreover - the young man crawled over to Zep's corpse, wincing as strain was put on his injured shoulder. Lawrence had done that, but it didn't matter. They'd both been desperate. There'd be plenty of time for apologies later. Right now, all that mattered was the key.

Adam searched and searched, growing more and more desperate and afraid. He could find no key. His good hand touched on something rough and leathery, buried in one of Zep's pockets, and he pulled it roughly out to examine it. It was just a wallet. Feverishly, the ex photographer began to rummage through it.

A few notes of money, a driver's license, and other personal belongings fell out as Adam searched. Funny, he thought. Less than twenty four hours ago, he would have been ecstatic to have found free money in a helpless man's wallet. Maybe not from a dead body, but still... Now, though, all that mattered was finding the key, or even a cell phone. Money didn't mean anything to him anymore, not when compared with freedom.

The last thing that fell out of the wallet was something that made Adam's blood run cold. It hit the hard tiles with a dull _thud_, and Adam stared at it stupidly, trying to make sense of the situation.

A mini-tape recorder.

His heart pounding horribly in his chest, Adam slowly lifted his right hand, the one that didn't have a bullet lodged in it, down and picked up the device. A dozen different reasons as to why Zep might have one of these - this device that Adam and Lawrence had been given when they'd been brought into this game, the device that contained a tape with Jigsaw's voice on it, giving them their instructions on how his sick "game" was to be played - ran through the young prisoner's head. But out of all the wild guesses that he jumped on, only one really made sense:

_Zep was a victim in this game, too._

Dull despair began to run through Adam's head, making his body shudder. If Zep had been a victim in this game, then that meant that Adam _hadn't_ killed the Jigsaw Killer. It meant that the sick bastard was still out there. And so was Lawrence... Defenseless, weak, severely blood-deprived Lawrence, who was their only hope of escaping this place.

Slowly, numbly, as though he actually needed confirmation of this terrible theory, Adam pressed the _play_ button on the recorder, and waited for that gnarling, scratchy voice that he knew would come.

"Hello, Mr. Hindle, or as they call you around the hospital: Zep. I want to play a game."

Every bit of blood in Adam's body seemed to stop flowing instantly. He had been right.

This horrible, horrible fact seemed to linger in the young man's mind, echoing all throughout his brain, so much so that he barely heard the voice on the recorder, droning on and on about how Zep, too, did not appreciate his life, and that he'd have to play a "game" in order to save himself from the slow and deadly poison that the killer had put in his body.

A slight noise from behind him made Adam, whose senses were enhanced greatly from all of the adrenalin and fear, turn around sharply, and the sight that met his eyes once he had almost made him faint.

The body, the body that had been lying in the middle of the room, dead from a seemingly self-inflicted gunshot to the head, a gun in one hand and a tape recorder in the other, both of which were now taken, was rising from the floor, slowly but surely, into a standing position. Adam gasped quietly, staring in wonder and terror at the new threat. None of this made any sense. How could this have happened?

Adam continued to watch, in fascinated horror, as the body, now standing, slowly righted itself. The young victim had stopped the tape player in his hand now, and the room was filled with a deafening silence that seemed little different from purgatory.

The only sound in the whole room was his own terrified pulse, and, horribly, the man - the sub-fucking-human man - ripping a piece of rubber-like materiel from his old and bold head. It came off with a rough tearing noise, and for a moment, its wearer turned his head this way and that, carefully, experimentally, before finally, disastrously, looking to Adam, who continued to watch him, frozen with terror and disgust.

"The key to that chain... is in the bathtub," the old man said slowly, nodding his head toward the dilapidated bath behind the chained man. Adam turned his eyes briefly to the tub that he had awoken in, and remembered, for the first time, the glowing, golden light that had disappeared along with the water when he, in his instinctive flailing, had pulled the plug and drained it. Horrified, the young man turned back to look at the man, the man that he now knew, beyond all doubt, was the Jigsaw Killer himself.

In some kind of semiconscious state, Adam saw that the man - the _man_, the man who was alive and breathing, not a dead body - was beginning to walk away, towards the door, and it was then that he realized the horrible truth: This evil person was going to leave him here, leave him here to die. He was going to shut the door of this terrible place, sealing him inside forever. And then he was going to find and destroy Lawrence, to make sure that he never found help for them both.

"_I'll bring someone back, I promise. I wouldn't lie to you."_

The surgeon's words rang dully inside Adam's head, and he found himself beginning to shiver violently. His hands fumbled blindly for Zep's discarded gun, and he lifted it up, its cold heaviness making his entire hand feel as dead as the situation seemed.

Jigsaw turned around, alerted by Adam's grunts of pain as pressure was put on his wounded shoulder. He began to raise something in his right hand, a small contraption that was barely bigger than his palm. His finger poised over the trigger, but the freelance photographer did not wait to find out what it was for, even though he was pretty sure that he knew already.

Maybe the Jigsaw Killer had misjudged Adam. Maybe he'd thought him incapable of recovering from such a devastating shock so quickly. Maybe he'd taken it for granted that the inexperience in handling such a weapon, or killing someone, for that matter, wouldn't matter when the user was so scared and filled with the desperate adrenalin to survive.

Either way, before the old man's finger could press on the switch of the weapon and stun his victim, Adam had already pulled the trigger of the gun. There was a deafening bang as the bullet was released, and then a dim squelching sound, similar to the sound a fish made as it flapped itself against wet cement, and the next moment, the killer was stumbling, the buzzer dropping from his hands as he began to fall backwards, a bullet caught just above his left eye.

Adam didn't wait. In his panicked state, he wasn't even sure if his bullet had hit or not, despite the obvious signs that it had. He kept on firing rounds, his hand pressing down hard on the trigger again and again, until there were no more left to fire. Jigsaw, several more bullets caught in his body, writhed on the ground where he'd fallen for a few seconds, seconds in which Adam, sobbing now, continued to press the empty trigger of the gun like Lawrence had done with Zep only minutes before, before finally lying still, his time up.

Adam let the gun fall from his bloody fingers, curled himself into a tiny ball on the damp and bloodstained floor, and began to cry quietly, not wanting to think about what he'd just done, or about Lawrence, his only friend, who had looked so pale and gaunt when he'd left, that the young man knew, deep down, that the chances of either of them getting out of this were very slim.

Wrapping his arms more tightly around himself in a hopeless attempt of comfort, Adam continued to sob, alone and terrified, as he waited for a seemingly unreachable person to help him. If this was what it felt like to be dying, then it wasn't at all peaceful and painless like people always said. It was hell.

Lawrence had no memory of reaching Tapp's body. He didn't remember crawling, more dead than alive, through the filthy sewer-like design of wherever the hell he was, leaving a thick trail of dark blood behind him from the bloody stump where his right ankle had once been. Only one thought was in his mind now, one desperate, urgent thought, which took priority over all else.

_Have to help Adam._

If he didn't get help, Adam would die. No one knew they were down here, no one would come. In his warped state of mind, Lawrence didn't even think about the fact that Tapp was dead, lying there as unmoving and lifeless as Zep had been. All the surgeon cared about was the cell phone. The cell phone that he yanked roughly from the dead man's body and dialed into desperately, his exhausted mind threatening to leave him completely.

9.

1.

1.

A ringing sound.

A click, then a female voice.

"911. What is your emergency?"

Lawrence gasped into the phone, trying desperately to stay awake.

"I-I need... I need the police."

His voice cracked and trembled, but thank God, it was still audible. The woman who had answered the phone said something that could have been "one moment, please," but that the injured man was really too tired to listen to, and the next moment, a different voice was speaking. A strong, male voice.

"Police," the voice said hurriedly. "What is your emergency?"

Lawrence took a deep, shuddering breath, feeling as he did so that one hundred gallons of blood was seeping out of his body.

"There's a man locked down here," he said rapidly, struggling to keep his voice above a whimper. "He needs help. I have no idea where we are, though. Please..."

"Sir, calm down..." the voice said, sounding almost as afraid as the man he was addressing. Lawrence almost felt like crying in frustration.

"I _can't_ be calm!" he snapped back, tears coming into his eyes as silent sobs wracked his exhausted body. "I don't have much time left! You need to find out where we are! Track us, search the city, ask people, _anything_! But for God's sake, hurry the fuck _up_!"

There was a short silence, then Lawrence heard the man on the other end talking to someone else. A few seconds later, he again addressed the surgeon.

"Sir, we're going to need a few minutes to track you. Can you wait that long?"

Lawrence bit into his lip and replied with a weak "yes," barely daring to hope.

X X X X X X X X X

Yup! Lawrence has managed to get help for Adam, but he's so weak and blood-deprived... Poor Lawrence. He's not going to make it, as I said. But he and Adam will share a moment before he dies, and Adam will go onto live, falling in love with another man, and sweet hurt/comfort shall follow thereafter. This fic is going to be LONG, since it will concentrate on Adam and the OC's relationship, and Adam's lingering trauma after what he's been through, so look forward to regular updates. P

- The OC that Adam falls in love with is going to be a cop (OMG! Spoilers!) named Leigh (who can guess where I got that name from?). I expanded on the cop idea when I read Adam Faulkner's Afterlife, by IAmMadlyInLoveWithJohnnyDepp. Damn, that's some hot angst and smut... Drools. Anyway, enough blabbing. Please continue to leave encouraging reviews, ya'll, like you did with my other two fics. It really encourages me.

I'll be updating this fic, as well as my I Would Never Hurt You one, as soon as I can. I also have many others planned, so look forward to them!


	2. Chapter 2

Yay! I'm not dead, and I have a new chapter here for you all! I know this story isn't as popular as my I Would Never Hurt You one (and don't worry; I'll be updating that one very soon!), but please give it a chance. There's some really cute Adam and Lawrence angst in this chapter, if I do say so myself! So, if you read it and like it, please drop me a quick line and give me some feedback. It makes me happy! :)

X X X X X X X X X

Adam sat huddled in the bathroom that had now become his prison, his hands around his knees and his body shaking with anguished sobs. He had never felt worse in his life, and that was certainly saying something.

He had now killed two people and, even though he tried to tell himself that they'd deserved it, that he himself would have died if he had not done what he had, that still didn't make it any easier. He had always been a very angry and passive person; he'd always believed that killing someone who deserved nothing less would be easy, but he now knew that that wasn't true, not at all.

All he could think about was his own body, pulsing and shivering, alive, moving, functioning... The other two had been like that, too, until he'd gotten to them, destroyed them. He was no better than either of them.

_What about Lawrence?_ a cruel, unbidden voice in his head asked, mock dripping like poison from the tone. _He's no better than you. He tried to kill you. He _meant_ to. It's only by pure luck that he didn't._

"He did that... for his family," Adam whimpered into his hands, speaking out loud to remind himself that he was still living. He didn't know why, but he had the feeling that if he let silence hang in the air for too long, he'd never get out of this place. "I'd have done that... i-if..." He stopped, feeling more tears coming into his eyes. He'd thought that he'd run out by now.

_Lawrence! Lawrence, I have a family, too! I don't see them; that's _my_ mistake! It's a mistake that I'd like to fix!_

The freelance photographer gave a low sob of anguish, then curled up even tighter. His chest was aching almost as much as his mangled shoulder now. The feeling was agony. He wanted Lawrence. He didn't care what he'd done, that he'd betrayed him for those he loved more. He didn't care if he couldn't find help for them both like he'd promised. He just _wanted_ him. He wanted him with him. He wanted them to...

He let out another sob, and hugged his knees like he'd never hugged anything before.

He wanted them to die together.

Lawrence forced his exhausted body to move forward with a fierce determination that he was surprised he had when every other part of him seemed to be dying. He was on his hands and knees now, and was crawling as fast as his battered body would allow. His right knee hardly moved at all, but still the surgeon forced it to contribute. He had to get back to Adam, to tell him that he'd managed to find them both help. The man on the phone had told him not to move, to just wait for them, and that they'd be there within an hour, but the terrified man had refused to listen.

He knew that they'd have no problems finding Adam after they'd found him. Leigh, the policeman that he'd been speaking to, had tracked their location within minutes, and the station where he was, the closest one, was just over an hour's drive away, if their powerful cars were being gunned at full-speed. And there was, after all, a thick trail of blood that led all the way back to where the freelance photographer was imprisoned.

But that wasn't what Lawrence was worried about. The look on the kid's face when he'd left him there... It'd been so scared, so hopeless, that the older man wasn't sure if Adam had the courage to wait one hour. He still had Zep's loaded gun with him...

With a feeling of joy in his stomach, which felt hollow and dry from all the blood that was rapidly draining out of it, Lawrence saw the open doorway that he'd crawled through earlier when he'd left Adam, just a few meters away. It seemed to take a tremendous effort to pull himself forward those last few meters, but something inside the dying man told him that he _had_ to, that him getting back to Adam and telling him that help was on its way was as vital as finding it had been.

Adam felt his heart jolt joyously at the sight of his friend, even though he looked as pale as a sheet and was emitting a blood trail behind him that made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like a clean child's movie. The younger man only just managed to stop himself from calling out things, like "hurry up" and "faster," as Lawrence painfully made his way over to him, still crawling.

The photographer held out his hands to him, as though he were getting ready to catch a child who had just taken their first few steps. He wanted that damned surgeon in his arms so badly, it was painful.

Finally, after what seemed like agonizing decades, Lawrence had reached him. He had paid no attention to the "new" body, lying in a pool of blood on the soaked floor. Adam doubted that he'd even noticed that it'd moved. Up close, the man looked even worse than he had when he had left. The blood that stained the path he'd crawled and his own clothes shone brightly, horribly brightly, compared to the almost colorless skin of the man who had shed it all.

"Oh, Larry... Fuck, Larry..." Adam took the older man's shuddering body in his arms and hugged him furiously. Lawrence had lost too much blood to do much more than lie there, but even so Adam felt comforted. "Larry, I'm so fucking glad you came back. I thought..." he swallowed, feeling his heart pounding hard in his chest. "I thought I was gonna die alone here."

Slowly, with an expression that looked like every last bit of energy had been drained from him with this effort, Lawrence raised his head, so that his face was barely an inch away from the man holding him.

"Adam..." he murmured, struggling to speak. His body felt as though it had no blood left in it at all. "You're not going to die in here. I found a cell phone. It was with Tapp... Tapp's dead body."

He felt the younger man tense slightly at this, as the news of yet another victim of this terrible game was brought to him. But he could tell Adam was more interested in the cell phone. He understood this completely. No one would want to be left to rot in this place, with or without a companion.

"D-Did... Did you call someone?" he asked quietly, almost fearfully.

Lawrence smiled, struggling to keep his body straight so he wouldn't collapse face-first into Adam's chest again.

"Of course," he replied gently, hoping to reassure his friend as much as possible. "I wouldn't have come back if I hadn't, Adam. Plus I promised I'd get you out of here. I rang the police, and they tracked us with the cell phone. They'll be here in under an hour."

Lawrence both felt and heard the effect these words had on the imprisoned young man in front of him. The freelance photographer gave a long, slow sigh, as though letting his breath out for the first time, though he had been breathing very heavily throughout their conversation, and his body seemed to relax completely. Satisfied, Lawrence allowed himself to fall forward into Adam's arms again, exhausted. Instantly, the prisoner tensed up again, gripping the older man's shoulders hard and shaking him.

"Larry? Larry? Fuck, man, get it together! Just hang on until they get here!"

Sighing, Lawrence clasped Adam's hands, which were still gripping his shoulders, with his own. He managed to raise his head a little, but not much. It was becoming very hard to stay awake and he could hardly feel anything, including the blood-stained stump where his right ankle had once been.

Being a highly-respected and praised doctor, he knew that this was not good news. He had known, the moment he'd put that saw to his leg and started cutting, that he wouldn't make it, but he hadn't thought about how much this would affect Adam... Until now.

"Adam..." he said, in almost a whisper, feeling the young man's grip on him relax ever-so-slightly. "I... I'm really sorry. I... wanted to stay alive for you."

At these words, Adam felt like someone had grabbed his heart right out of his chest, thrown it to the ground, and then stomped mercilessly all over it. He was having trouble breathing, his vision was becoming blurred, and he could barely feel his body. He felt dead, surreal. He sat there for a few moments, unable to do anything from the shock. But before long he seemed to come to himself.

Sobbing quietly, the freelance photographer put out his uninjured arm and cupped the older man's face, as gently as he could, in his trembling hand.

"Don't be sorry, Larry," he murmured, almost inaudible in his misery. "It's that sick bastard's fault... It's not yours. And..." He swallowed. "And... I'm the one who should be sorry. I was following you around, taking pictures of you, judging you... Even though you're the nicest fucking person I've ever met."

Lawrence gasped a few times, attempting to get some breath back into his aching lungs. He took one of his own hands from Adam's bloodstained shoulder and ran it slowly down the young man's cheek, instead.

"I'm sorry too, Adam," he replied, quietly, so quietly. "I'm sorry I hurt you... Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I said you were part of this game. You... You aren't, Adam. You're so... So kind, Adam."

The surgeon's voice was weak, almost too quiet to hear. But Adam heard him. He felt more tears come into his eyes as he realized that his time with this wonderful person was almost at an end. There was so much they could have done together, so many happy memories they could have made. But now that was impossible.

Lawrence stared into Adam's eyes, and Adam stared back, his hand still cupped under the older man's chin, and the surgeon's hand still caressing his cheek. They were so close now. Barely an inch from each other's faces.

Both realized at more or less the same time, realized something that had been so blatantly obvious that they should have seen it hours ago: They loved each other. And although that realization had come to them abruptly, at such a time and in such a place, it still didn't seem like that much of a shock. It was more like something that they both should have realized long ago.

They didn't need to say it. They both knew. Slowly, the two let their mouths connect. It was the best moment Adam had ever had in his life, but also the worst. It was so good to be making such contacts with someone who really and genuinely cared about him, but it was horrible to think that he wouldn't be around for much longer, and also such an awful time and place to be doing such things.

Both men were sobbing uncontrollably as they kissed, grabbing at one another as though they thought the other would disappear if they didn't. Adam pushed his hand roughly under Lawrence's blood-stained shirt, feeling the soft, warm skin there. Shuddering with a mixture of pain and pleasure, the older man reacted by shoving his tongue further into Adam's mouth, hearing his muffled moan and feeling his anguished tears, still running down his face and mingling with his own.

The two continued kissing, clawing desperately at one another's chests, and crying. Adam could hear Lawrence's tormented sobs of misery and despair, muffled by his own mouth. He could feel the tears from the older man's face leaking onto his. But, most of all, above everything else, the photographer could feel his breaking heart pounding furiously from the feel and taste of the other man.

He could also feel how the surgeon's body shook uncontrollably, almost hard enough to force the two away from each other's arms and lips, how the blood ran down both their bodies, mixing and blending. How could something be so wonderful and so terrible at the same time?

In one way, it seemed like hours later when Lawrence, exhausted and at the end of his strength, collapsed completely against the younger man, his arms just unable to hold himself up any longer. But in another, it only seemed like a few seconds. His lips slid from Adam's and his hands fell limply under his shirt as his body slumped.

He was dying.

Adam clenched his teeth desperately, trying and trying not to let any more tears fall. But they did, anyway. Lawrence lay motionless against his companion's chest, his dark and haunted eyes struggling to stay open and his tired beyond recognition brain struggling not to stop working. And Adam held him. He held him so tightly, even though he was nothing short of exhausted himself.

Lawrence forced himself to speak, even though as he did, every other part of his body was failing him, shutting down and deserting him as though they had grown tired of their owner.

The words were slurred at first, impossible to make out. The dying man kept trying, though. He had to say what he wanted to say before he died. That was the last thing he had to do, his final goal. Then he could at least die with one less regret. For a few seconds - a few, agonizing seconds, in which the surgeon grew weaker and weaker - he only gasped and mumbled incomprehensively. But finally, after several tries, Lawrence, only a few inches away from Death's Door, managed to whimper:

"I love you, Adam."

And he only just had time to hear the other man's reply, his grieving and brokenhearted reply -

"I love you too, Lawrence."

- Before he slipped away altogether, into the bitter-sweet embrace of unconsciousness. He didn't feel himself slipping away into death, just a few seconds after. But the other man did. He felt a strange, horrible kind of emptiness wash over the body in his arms, as though the older man's very soul had left him, which was how some people would have put it in any case, and was left clutching what seemed like an empty shell, a mere shadow of the wonderful person that had been Lawrence.

Adam was too exhausted to cry. He was almost too exhausted to even register his friend's death. No sooner had the words, "he's dead," run through his mind, had the photographer's own strength and consciousness left him, and his head had drooped forward, next to Lawrence's, barely before he'd realized what had happened.

X X X X X X X X X

No! NOOOOO! Lawrence is dead! I really hated killing that wonderful guy off, especially since I'm always insisting that he and Adam survive. As I say in my profile, I'll kill Lawrence off occasionally if Adam gets to be with a cute OC, but NEVER Adam! He's just too cute and sweet to kill off! Anyway, please let me know what you think (REVIEW, DAMN IT!), and, if you're curious, in the next chapter, Adam gets rescued by Leigh and some other cops (obviously), and... Well, I don't wanna spoil it!


	3. Chapter 3

Hey, guys! I know this fic isn't my most popular. Probably because it's Adam/OC and not Adam/Lawrence, but come on! It's still hot! /Arrogant. There'll be lots of smut and angst, and Adam will always love Lawrence! Regardless, I'm going to finish this fic, just like all my other ones. Thanks to those of you who have reviewed, and sorry for the wait (again)!

X X X X X X X X X X

About an half an hour later, the SWAT team and various police officers had found them, lying there, wrapped in each other's arms, motionless and bloodstained. They naturally took more notice of them than of the two obvious dead bodies nearby, in addition to the third one they'd found on their way down to this place. Urgency wasn't needed for the dead. For the living, if there _was_ anyone here still living, even mere seconds were precious.

There was a pained gasp, and one of the SWAT team members broke apart from the rest and rushed over to the two huddled victims, kneeling down beside them and desperately shaking them. There was so much blood, so much...

The older man wouldn't stir, and it was obvious from his deathly white face and the large, bloodstained stump where his right ankle should have been that he never would again. The younger man, though, awoke almost straight away, his eyes opening lazily and his body sagging in the grip of the man who held him.

"Adam... Adam, thank God."

Adam made a half-grunting noise from the back of his throat as he struggled to stay awake. His shoulder was stained with blood and he was shivering violently.

"Leigh, is the other..." someone came up behind the young cop, speaking in a low tone in the hopes that the gasping victim would not hear. But he did.

"L-Law...rence," Adam breathed, shaking uncontrollably in the man, Leigh's, arms.

"Kyle, we have to worry about Adam..."

Leigh spoke in code, in a way. Under most circumstances, the victim wouldn't have understood the meaning behind such a sentence in a condition like that. But Adam... He was so worried about his friend - the aching dread that was rising in his chest was more than enough evidence of that - that he missed nothing.

"D-Don't worry... about me," he said, struggling to get the words out. He was leaning with his head against the young cop's chest, unable to find the strength to lift himself into a sitting position. "Save... Lawrence."

Leigh flinched as the tiny body against his went limp, its owner unable to stay awake any longer. He turned to his superiors, his expression desperate.

"If we don't get him out of here soon, he's going to go the same way as Dr. Gordon!"

He never would have said such words if his sleeping bundle had still been awake. As it was, however, Leigh could not keep the desperate words from escaping his mouth. And, with relief, he saw that his tone had managed to convince the others, as well.

Wasting no more time, two of the largest and strongest of the police officers took the limp body from Leigh's arms and lifted it effortlessly onto the waiting stretcher. The young cop quickly got to his feet and went over to join the two, who were lifting the stretcher, with Adam's body on top of it, into the air. He walked beside them the whole time as they walked, taking the stairs, which were further away, as they were obviously unable to climb the ladder. There was no way that Leigh would be leaving this kid, even for a second.

There were no spare ambulances available at this time, since it was Saturday, and there were drunk drivers and fight victims left and right to tend to. There was also no time to wait for one. Leigh knew, as he stared numbly at his two colleagues unloading Adam's body from the stretcher and into the back of one of the many police cars there, that the young victim's life depended on speed. They had to get him some help as soon as possible.

Leigh got into the backseat of the car, along with one of the two cops who had brought Adam there, whose name was Johnson, and took the impossibly tiny body from the other man, holding the unconscious man against him with all his strength and ignoring all of the blood that stained onto him and the once-so-shiny seats of the car. The other cop, Toby, gunned the engine of the police car and took to the streets in record time, paying little to no attention to the rules of the road.

Adam was still breathing, but very faintly. If not for the constant shudders and spasms that he emitted every few seconds, Leigh would not have believed that he was alive. His only hope now, besides them getting the suffering victim to a hospital before he died, of course, was that the young man would not wake up before they got there. He couldn't suffer anymore, he just couldn't.

But hoping for this was ridiculous, both logically and emotionally.

Almost halfway to the hospital, Adam did indeed awaken, and Leigh felt his heart sink as the victim's eyes widened in pain and fear. He felt the weak, _horribly_ weak, body pushing desperately against his, as though its user was employing all of his strength into extricating himself from the man holding him.

Leigh had no trouble restraining him - his efforts were so futile, he probably could have held him with only one finger - but it was the _idea_ that hurt him. The idea that the poor kid was suffering even more than he already had been.

"L-Lawrence," Adam murmured against his restrainer's chest, and his struggles grew slightly more desperate.

Johnson, who had been sitting quietly and watching them, locked his eyes worriedly with his colleague's.

"Get sedation," Leigh muttered, and it was at times like these that he really wished he had a second language. At the word "sedation," Adam's body began to writhe and strain, franticly, hopelessly trying to escape the other man's grip.

"No!" he screamed, punching fruitlessly at his holder's chest. "Don't! No!"

He was crying now, countless tears running down his terrified face, as Leigh helplessly tried to comfort him.

"Adam, Adam..." he whispered, his voice almost as shaky as the man he was addressing. "Calm down... Please."

But Adam didn't calm down. He continued struggling, fighting with every bit of energy he still had left in his exhausted body, sobbing shamelessly as he pleadingly screamed the same two words over and over. "No! Don't!"

It was half with regret and half with relief that Leigh saw that petrified, inconsolable face crease slightly with pain as the needle that Johnson had gotten penetrated his skin, just above the neck vein.

For a moment, Adam's eyes widened, his jaw clenched, and his body tensed, and that was the bad part, the part that made Leigh hate himself almost as much as he was hating Johnson right now. But almost immediately after, the young man's eyes closed, his body relaxed, and his face became almost peaceful, and that was the good part, the part that the other man was thankful for.

Leigh gripped Adam's sleeping body still tighter in his own trembling arms, burying his head in the soft, thick hair and feeling the warmness of the body against his.

X X X X X X X X X X

Kind of a short chapter, but at least important things happened! Adam met Leigh, his new butt-buddy (XD), and got rescued! And, am I the only one who finds it incredibly hot for Adam to be sedated? I don't know why. Maybe I just have a sick fetish. XD Anyway, R&R!


End file.
